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NATURE 




RALPH WALDO EMERSON 




New York 

DUFFIELD & COMPANY 

1909 



i 










NATURE 

The rounded world is fair to see, 

Nine times folded in mystery : 

Though baffled seers cannot impart 

The secret of its laboring heart, 

Throb thine with Nature's throbbing breast, 

And all is clear from east to west. 

Spirit that lurks each form within 

Beckons to spirit of its kin; 

Self-kindled every atom glows, 

And hints the future which it owes. 

There are days which occur in 
this climate, at almost any season 
of the year, wherein the world 
reaches its perfection, when the 
air, the heavenly bodies, and the 
earth, make a harmony, as if na- 
ture would indulge her offspring; 
when, in these bleak upper sides 
of the planet, nothing is to desire 
that we have heard of the happiest 
latitudes, and we bask in the shin- 
ing hours of Florida and Cuba; 







when everything that has life gives 
sign of satisfaction, and the cattle 
that lie on the ground seem to have 
great and tranquil thoughts. These 
halcyons may be looked for with a 
little more assurance in that pure 
October weather, which we dis- 
tinguish by the name of Indian 
Summer. The day, immeasurably 
long, sleeps over the broad hills 
and warm wide fields. To have 
lived through all its sunny hours, 
seems longevity enough. The soli- 
tary places do not seem quite lone- 
ly. At the gates of the forest, the 
surprised man of the world is 
forced to leave his city estimates of 
great and small, wise and foolish. 
The knapsack of custom falls off 
his back with the first step he 
makes into these precincts. Here 
is sanctity which shames our re- 
ligions, and reality which discred- 




its our heroes. Here we find nature 
to be the circumstance which 
dwarfs every other circumstance, 
and judges like a god all men that 
come to her. We have crept out of 
our close and crowded houses into 
the night and morning, and we see 
what majestic beauties daily wrap 
us in their bosom. How willingly 
we would escape the barriers 
which render them comparatively 
impotent, escape the sophistication 
and second thought, and suffer na- 
ture to entrance us. The tempered 
light of the woods is like a perpet- 
ual morning, and is stimulating 
and heroic. The anciently reported 
spells of these places creep on us. 
The stems of pines, hemlocks, and 
oaks, almost gleam like iron on the 
excited eye. The incommunicable 
trees begin to persuade us to live 
with them, and quit our life of 




solemn trifles. Here no history, or 
church, or state, is interpolated on 
the divine sky and the immortal 
year. How easily we might walk 
onward into opening landscape, 
absorbed by new pictures, and by 
thoughts fast succeeding each 
other, until by degrees the recol- 
lection of home was crowded out 
of the mind, all memory obliter- 
ated by the tyranny of the present, 
and we were led in triumph by na- 
ture. 

These enchantments are medici- 
nal, they sober and heal us. These 
are plain pleasures, kindly and na- 
tive to us. We come to our own, 
and make friends with matter, 
which the ambitious chatter of the 
schools would persuade us to de- 
spise. We never can part with it; 
the mind loves its old home: as 
water to our thirst, so is the rock, 




the ground, to our eyes, and hands, 
and feet. It is firm water: it is cold 
flame: what health, what affinity! 
Ever an old friend, ever like a 
dear friend and brother, when we 
chat affectedly with strangers, 
comes in this honest face, and takes 
a grave liberty with us, and shames 
us out of our nonsense. Cities give 
not the human senses room enough. 
We go out daily and nightly to 
feed the eyes on the horizon, and 
require so much scope, just as we 
need water for our bath. There 
are all degrees of natural influ- 
ence, from these quarantine pow- 
ers of nature, up to her dearest and 
gravest ministrations to the imagi- 
nation and the soul. There is the 
bucket of cold water from the 
spring, the wood-fire to which the 
chilled traveler rushes for safety — 
and there is the sublime moral of 




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autumn and of noon. We nestle in 
nature, and draw our living as 
parasites from her roots and 
grains, and we receive glances 
from the heavenly bodies, which 
call us to solitude, and foretell the 
remotest future. The blue zenith 
is the point in which romance and 
reality meet. I think, if we should 
be rapt away into all that we 
dream of heaven, and should con- 
verse with Gabriel and Uriel, 
the upper sky would be all that 
would remain of our furniture. 

It seems as if the day was not 
wholly profane, in which we have 
given heed to some natural object. 
The fall of snowflakes in a still air, 
preserving to each crystal its per- 
fect form; the blowing of sleet 
over a wide sheet of water, and 
over plains ; the waving rye-field ; 
the mimic waving of acres of hous- 




tonia, whose innumerable florets 
whiten and ripple before the eye; 
the reflections of trees and flowers 
in glassy lakes; the musical steam- 
ing odorous south wind, which 
converts all trees towind-harps ;the 
crackling and spurting of hemlock 
in the flames; or of pine-logs, 
which yield glory to the walls and 
faces in the sitting-room, — these 
are the music and pictures of the 
most ancient religion. My house 
stands in low land, with limited 
outlook, and on the skirt of the vil- 
lage. But I go with my friend to 
the shore of our little river, and 
with one stroke of the paddle, I 
leave the village politics and per- 
sonalities, yes, and the world of 
villages and personalities behind, 
and pass into a delicate realm of 
sunset and moonlight, too bright 
almost for spotted man to enter 



13 







without novitiate and probation. 
We penetrate bodily this incredi- 
ble beauty: we dip our hands in 
this painted element: our eyes are 
bathed in these lights and forms. 
A holiday, a villeggiatura, a 
royal revel, the proudest, most 
heart-rejoicing festival that valor 
and beauty, power and taste, ever 
decked and enjoyed, establishes it- 
self on the instant. These sunset 
clouds, these delicately emerging 
stars, with their private and inef- 
fable glances, signify it and prof- 
fer it. I am taught the poorness 
of our invention, the ugliness of 
towns and palaces. Art and luxury 
have early learned that they must 
work as enhancement and sequel to 
this original beauty. I am overin- 
structed for my return. Henceforth 
I shall be hard to please. I can- 
not go back to toys. I am grown 




14 



d3X^ 




expensive and sophisticated. I can 
no longer live without elegance; 
but a countryman shall be my mas- 
ter of revels. He who knows the 
most, he who knows what sweets 
and virtues are in the ground, the 
waters, the plants, the heavens, and 
how to come at these enchant- 
ments, is the rich and royal man. 
Only as far as the masters of the 
world have called in nature to 
their aid, can they reach the height 
of magnificence. This is the mean- 
ing of their hanging-gardens, vil- 
las, garden-houses, islands, parks, 
and preserves, to back their faulty 
personality with these strong ac- 
cessories. I do not wonder that the 
landed interest should be invinci- 
ble in the state with these danger- 
ous auxiliaries. These bribe and 
invite; not kings, not palaces, not 
men, not women, but these tender 



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IS 




and poetic stars, eloquent of secret 
promises. We heard what the rich 
man said, we knew of his villa, his 
grove, his wine, and his company, 
but the provocation and point of 
the invitation came out of these be- 
guiling stars. In their soft glances, 
I see what men strove to realize 
in some Versailles, or Paphos, or 
Ctesiphon. Indeed, it is the magi- 
cal lights of the horizon, and the 
blue sky for the background, 
which saves all our works of art, 
which were otherwise bawbles. 
When the rich tax the poor with 
servility and obsequiousness, they 
should consider the effect of man 
reputed to be the possessors of na- 
ture, on imaginative minds. Ah! 
if the rich were rich as the poor 
fancy riches! A boy hears a mili- 
tary band play on the field at 
night, and he has kings and queens, 




and famous chivalry palpably be- 
fore him. He hears the echoes of 
a horn in a hill country, in the 
Notch Mountains, for example, 
which converts the mountains into 
an Aeolian harp, and this super- 
natural tiralira restores to him the 
Dorian mythology, Apollo, Di- 
ana, and all divine hunters and 
huntresses. Can a musical note be 
so lofty, so haughtily beautiful! To 
the poor young poet, thus fabulous 
is his picture of society-; he is loy- 
al; he respects the rich; they are 
rich for the sake of his imagina- 
tion; how poor his fancy would 
be, if they were not rich! That 
they have some high-fenced grove, 
which they call a park; that they 
live in larger and better-garnished 
saloons than he has visited, and go 
in coaches, keeping only the society 
of the elegant, to watering-places, 




n 




and to distant cities, are the 
groundwork from which he has 
delineated estates of romance, 
compared with which their actual 
possessions are shanties and pad- 
docks. The muse herself betrays 
her son, and enhances the gifts of 
wealth and well-born beauty, by a 
radiation out of the air, and 
clouds, and forests that skirt the 
road, — a certain haughty favor, as 
if from patrician genii to patri- 
cians, a kind of aristocracy in na- 
ture, a prince of the power of the 
air. 

The moral sensibility which 
makes Edens and Tempes so 
easily, may not be always found, 
but the material landscape is never 
far off. We can find these en- 
chantments without visiting the 
Como Lake, or the Madeira Isl- 
ands. We exaggerate the praises 



38 



of local scenery. In every land- 
scape, the point of astonishment is 
the meeting of the sky and the 
earth, and that is seen from the first 
hillock as well as from the top of 
the Alleghanies. The stars at 
night stoop down over the brown- 
est, homeliest common, with all the 
spiritual magnificence which they 
shed on the Campagna, or on the 
marble deserts of Egypt. The up- 
rolled clouds and the colors of 
morning and evening, will trans- 
figure maples and alders. The 
difference between landscape and 
landscape is small, but there is 
great difference in the beholders. 
There is nothing so wonderful in 
any particular landscape, as the 
necessity of being beautiful under 
which every landscape lies. Na- 
ture cannot be surprised in un- 





dress. Beauty breaks in every- 
where. 

But it is very easy to outrun the 
sympathy of readers on this topic, 
which school-men called natura 
naturata, or nature passive. One 
can hardly speak directly of it 
without excess. It is as easy to 
broach in mixed companies what 
is called "the subject of religion." 
A susceptible person does not like 
to divulge his tastes in this kind, 
without the apology of some triv- 
ial necessity: he goes to see a 
wood-lot, or to look at the crops, 
or to fetch a plant or a mineral 
from a remote locality, or he car- 
ries a fowling-piece, or a fishing- 
rod. I suppose this shame must 
have a good reason. A dilettant- 
ism in nature is barren and un- 
worthy. The fop of fields is no 
better than his brother of Broad- 



way. Men are naturally hunters 
and inquisitive of woodcraft, and 
I suppose that such a gazetteer as 
wood-cutters and Indians should 
furnish facts for, would take place 
in the most sumptuous drawing- 
rooms of all the "Wreaths" and 
"Flora's chaplets" of the book- 
shops ; yet ordinarily, whether we 
are too clumsy for so subtle a 
topic, or from whatever cause, as 
soon as men begin to write on na- 
ture, they fall into euphuism. Fri- 
volity is a most unfit tribute to 
Pan, who ought to be represented 
in the mythology as the most conti- 
nent of gods. I would not be fri- 
volous before the admirable re- 
serve and prudence of time, yet I 
cannot renounce the right of re- 
turning often to this old topic. The 
multitude of false churches ac- 
credits the true religion. Litera- 




ture, poetry, science, are the hom- 
age of man to this unfathomed se- 
cret, concerning which no sane 
man can affect an indifference or 
incuriosity. Nature is loved by 
what is best in us. It is loved as 
the city of God, although, or rath- 
er because there is no citizen. The 
sunset is unlike anything that is 
underneath it: it wants men. And 
the beauty of nature must always 
seem unreal and mocking, until 
the landscape has human figures, 
that are as good as itself. If there 
were good men, there would never 
be this rapture in nature. If the 
king is in the palace nobody looks 
at the walls. It is when he is gone, 
and the house is filled with grooms 
and gazers, that we turn from the 
people, to find relief in the majes- 
tic men that are suggested by the 
pictures and the architecture. The 



critics who complain of the sickly 
separation of the beauty of nature 
from the thing to be done, must 
consider that our hunting of the 
picturesque is inseparable from 
our protest against false society. 
Man is fallen ; nature is erect, and 
serves as a differential thermome- 
ter, detecting the presence or ab- 
sence of the divine sentiment in 
man. By fault of our dulness and 
selfishness, we are looking up to 
nature, but when we are convales- 
cent, nature will look up to us. We 
see the foaming brook with com- 
punction: if our own life flowed 
with the right energy, we should 
shame the brook. The stream of 
zeal sparkles with real fire, and 
not with reflex rays of sun and 
moon. Nature may be as selfishly 
studied as trade. Astronomy to 
the selfish becomes astrology; psy- 




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23 



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chology, mesmerism (with intent 
to show where our spoons are 
gone) ; and anatomy and physi- 
ology become phrenology and 
palmistry. 

But taking timely warning, and 
leaving many things unsaid on this 
topic, let us not longer omit our 
homage to the Efficient Nature, 
natura naturans, the quick cause, 
before which all forms flee as the 
driven snows, itself secret, its 
works driven before it in flocks 
and multitudes, (as the ancient 
represented nature by Proteus, a 
shepherd), and in undescribable 
variety. It publishes itself in crea- 
tures, reaching from particles and 
spicula, through transformation 
on transformation to the highest 
symmetries, arriving at consum- 
mate results without a shock or a 
leap. A little heat, that is, a little 





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motion, is all that differences the 
bald, dazzling white, and deadly 
cold poles of the earth from the 
prolific tropical climates. All 
changes pass without violence, by 
reason of the two cardinal condi- 
tions of boundless space and 
boundless time. Geology has ini- 
tiated us into the secularity of na- 
ture, and taught us to disuse our 
dame-school measures, and ex- 
change our Mosaic and Ptole- 
maic schemes for her large style. 
We know nothing rightly, for 
want of perspective. Now we learn 
what patient periods must round 
themselves before the rock is 
formed, then before the rock is 
broken, and the first lichen race 
has disintegrated the thinnest ex- 
ternal plate into soil, and opened 
the door for the remote Flora, 
Fauna, Ceres, and Pomona, to 




come in. How far off yet is the 
trilobite! how far the quadruped! 
how inconceivably remote is man! 
All duly arrive, and then race after 
race of men. It is a long way 
from granite to the oyster; further 
yet to Plato, and the preaching of 
the immortality of the soul. Yet 
all must come, as surely as the first 
atom has two sides. 

Motion or change, and identity 
or rest, are the first and second se- 
crets of nature: Motion and Rest. 
The whole code of her laws may 
be written on the thumb-nail, or 
the signet of a ring. The whirling 
bubble on the surface of a brook, 
admits us to the secret of the me- 
chanics of the sky. Every shell 
on the beach is a key to it. A lit- 
tle water made to rotate in a cup 
explains the formation of the sim- 
pler shells ; the addition of matter 



26 



from year to year, arrives at last 
at the most complex forms ; and yet 
so poor is nature with all her craft, 
that, from the beginning to the end 
of the universe, she has but one 
stuff, — but one stuff with its two 
ends, to serve up all her dream- 
like variety. Compound it how 
she will, star, sand, fire, water, 
tree, man, it is still one stuff, and 
betrays the same properties. 

Nature is always consistent, 
though she feigns to contravene 
her own laws. She keeps her laws, 
and seems to transcend them. She 
arms and equips an animal to find 
its place and living in the earth, 
and, at the same time, she arms and 
equips another animal to destroy 
it. Space exists to divide crea- 
tures ; but by clothing the sides of 
a bird with a few feathers, she 

gives him a petty omnipresence. 
27 



■__ 




The direction is forever onward, 
but the artist still goes back for 
materials, and begins again with 
the first elements on the most ad- 
vanced stage: otherwise, all goes 
to ruin. If we look at her work, 
we seem to catch a glance of a sys- 
tem in transition. Plants are the 
young of the world, vessels of 
health and vigor; but they grope 
ever upward toward conscious- 
ness; the trees are imperfect men, 
and seem to bemoan their impris- 
onment, rooted in the ground. The 
animal is the novice and proba- 
tioner of a more advanced order. 
The men, though young, having 
tasted the first drop from the cup 
of thought, are already dissipated: 
the maples and ferns are still un- 
corrupt; yet no doubt, when they 
come to consciousness, they too 
will curse and swear. Flowers so 




_— 



strictly belong to youth, that we 
adult men soon come to feel, that 
their beautiful generations con- 
cern not us : we have had our day; 
now let the children have theirs. 
The flowers jilt us, and we are old 
bachelors with our ridiculous ten- 
derness. 

Things are so strictly related, 
that according to the skill of the 
eye, from any one object the parts 
and properties of any other may 
be predicted. If we had eyes to 
see it, a bit of stone from the city 
wall would certify us of the neces- 
sity that man must exist, as readily 
as the city. That identity makes 
us all one, and reduces to nothing 
great intervals on our customary 
scale. We talk of deviations from 
natural life, as if artificial life 
were not also natural. The smooth- 
est curled courtier in the boudoirs 




1 



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i 



of a palace has an animal nature, 
rude and aboriginal as a white 
bear, omnipotent to its own ends, 
and is directly related, there amid 
essences and billets-doux, to Hima- 
laya mountain-chains and the axis 
of the globe. If we consider how 
much we are nature's, we need not 
be superstitious about towns, as if 
that terrific or benefic force did 
not find us there also, and fashion 
cities. Nature, who made the ma- 
son, made the house. We may 
easily hear too much of rural in- 
fluences. The cool, disengaged 
air of natural objects, makes them 
enviable to us, chafed and irritable 
creatures with red faces, and we 
think we shall be as grand as they, 
if we camp out and eat roots; but 
let us be men instead of wood- 
chucks, and the oak and the elm 
shall gladly serve us, though we 



30 



sit in chairs of ivory on carpets of 
silk. 

This guiding identity runs 
through all the surprises and con- 
trasts of the piece, and character- 
izes every law. Man carries the 
world in his head, the whole as- 
tronomy and chemistry suspended 
in a thought. Because the history 
of nature is charactered in his 
brain, therefore is he the prophet 
and discoverer of her secrets. 
Every known fact in natural sci- 
ence was divined by the presenti- 
ment of somebody, before it was 
actually verified. A man does not 
tie his shoe without recognizing 
laws which bind the farthest re- 
gions of nature : moon, plant, gas, 
crystal, are concrete geometry and 
numbers. Common sense knows 
its own, and recognizes the fact at 
first sight in chemical experiment. 



m* 



The common sense of Franklin, 
Dalton, Davy and Black, is the 
same common sense which made 
the arrangements which now it 
discovers. 

If the identity expresses organ- 
ized rest, the counter action runs 
also into organization. The as- 
tronomers said, "Give us matter, 
and a little motion, and we will 
construct the universe. It is not 
enough that we should have mat- 
ter, we must also have a single im- 
pulse, one shove to launch the 
mass, and generate the harmony of 
the centrifugal and centripetal 
forces. Once heave the ball from 
the hand, and we can show how all 
this mighty order grew." "A very 
unreasonable postulate," said the 
metaphysicians, "and a plain beg- 
ging of the question. Could you 
not prevail to know the genesis of 



32 






■ 



~ 



projection, as well as the continua- 
tion of it?" Nature, meanwhile, 
had not waited for the discussion, 
but, right or wrong, bestowed the 
impulse, and the balls rolled. It 
was no great affair, a mere push, 
but the astronomers were right in 
making much of it, for there is no 
end to the consequences of the act. 
That famous aboriginal push 
propagates itself through all the 
balls of the system, and through 
every atom of every ball, through 
all the races of creatures, and 
through the history and perform- 
ances of every individual. Exag- 
geration is in the course of things. 
Nature sends no creature, no man 
into the world, without adding a 
small excess of his proper quality. 
Given the planet, it is still neces- 
sary to add the impulse; so, to 
every creature nature added a lit- 



tie violence of direction in its 
proper path, a shove to put it on 
its way; in every instance, a slight 
generosity, a drop too much. With- 
out electricity the air would rot, 
and without this violence of direc- 
tion, which men and women have, 
without a spice of bigot and fa- 
natic, no excitement, no efficiency. 
We aim above the mark, to hit the 
mark. Every act hath some false- 
hod of exaggeration in it. And 
when now and then comes along 
some sad, sharp-eyed man, who 
sees how paltry a game is played, 
and refuses to play, but blabs the 
secret; — how then? is the bird 
flown? O no, the wary Nature 
sends a new troop of fairer forms, 
of lordlier youths, with a little 
more excess of direction to hold 
them fast to their several aims; 
makes them a little wrongheaded 



in that direction in which they are 
Tightest, and on goes the game 
again with new whirl, for a gen- 
eration or two more. The child 
with his sweet pranks, the fool of 
his senses, commanded by every 
sight and sound, without any pow- 
er to compare and rank his sensa- 
tions, abandoned to a whistle or a 
painted chip, to a lead dragoon, or 
a ginger-bread dog, individualiz- 
ing everything, generalizing noth- 
ing, delighted with every new 
thing, lies down at night overpow- 
ered by the fatigue, which this 
day of continual petty madness has 
incurred. But Nature has an- 
swered her purpose with the curly, 
dimpled lunatic. She has tasked 
every faculty, and has secured the 
symmetrical growth of the bodily 
frame, by all these attitudes and 
exertions, an end of the first im- 



35 



portance, which could not be 
trusted to any care less perfect 
than her own. This glitter, this 
opaline luster plays round the top 
of every toy to his eye, to insure 
his fidelity, and he is deceived to 
his good. We are made alive and 
kept alive by the same arts. Let 
the stoics say what they please, 
we do not eat for the good of liv- 
ing, but because the meat is savory 
and the appetite is keen. The 
vegetable life does not content it- 
self with casting from the flower 
or the tree a single seed, but it fills 
the air and earth with a prodigal- 
ity of seeds, that, if thousands 
perish, thousands may plant them- 
selves, that hundreds may come up, 
that tens may live to maturity, 
that, at least, one may replace the 
parent. All things betray the same 

calculated profusion. The excess 

36 







of fear with which the animal 
frame is hedged round, shrinking 
from cold, starting at sight of a 
snake, or at a sudden noise, pro- 
tects us, through a multitude of 
groundless alarms, from some one 
real danger at last. The lover seeks 
in marriage his private felicity 
and perfection, with no prospec- 
tive end; and nature hides in his 
happiness her own ends, namely, 
progeny, or the perpetuity of the 
race. 

But the craft with which the 
world is made runs also into the 
mind and character of men. No 
man is quite sane; each has a vein 
of folly in his composition, a 
slight determination of blood to 
the head, to make sure of holding 
him hard to some one point which 
nature had taken to heart. Great 
causes are never tried on their 




merits ; but the cause is reduced to 
particulars to suit the size of the 
partisans, and the contention is 
ever hottest on minor matters. Not 
less remarkable is the overfaith of 
each man in the importance of 
what he has to do or say. The poet, 
the prophet, has a higher value for 
what he utters than any hearer, 
and therefore it gets spoken. The 
strong, self-complacent Luther 
declares with an emphasis, not to 
be mistaken, that "God himself 
cannot do without wise men." Ja- 
cob Behmen and George Fox be- 
tray their egotism in the perti- 
nacity of their controversial tracts, 
and James Naylor once suffered 
himself to be worshiped as the 
Christ. Each prophet comes pres- 
ently to identify himself with his 
thought, and to esteem his hat and 

shoes sacred. However this may 

38 



— - 



discredit such persons with the ju- 
dicious, it helps them with the 
people, as it gives heat, pungency, 
and publicity to their words. A 
similar experience is not infre- 
quent in private life. Each young 
and ardent person writes a diary, 
in which, when the hours of 
prayer and penitence arrive, he in- 
scribes his soul. The pages thus 
written are, to him, burning and 
fragrant: he reads them on his 
knees by midnight and by the 
morning star; he wets them with 
his tears : they are sacred ; too good 
for the world, and hardly yet to be 
shown to the dearest friend. ' This 
is the man-child that is born to the 
soul, and her life still circulates in 
the babe. The umbilical cord has 
not yet been cut. After some time 
has elapsed, he begins to wish to 
admit his friend to this hallowed 



39 



m 



il 





experience, and with hesitation, 
yet with firmness, exposes the 
pages to his eye. Will they not 
burn his eyes? The friend coldly 
turns them over, and passes from 
the writing to conversation, with 
easy transition, which strikes the 
other party with astonishment and 
vexation. He cannot suspect the 
writing itself. Days and nights of 
fervid life, of communion with 
angels of darkness and of light, 
have engraved their shadowy 
characters on that tear-stained 
book. He suspects the intelligence 
or the heart of his friend. Is there 
then no friend? He cannot yet 
credit that one may have impres- 
sive experience, and yet may not 
know how to put his private fact 
into literature; and perhaps the 
discovery that wisdom has other 

tongues and ministers than we, 

40 




- 



__ 




that though we should hold our 
peace, the truth would not the less 
be spoken, might check injuriously 
the flames of our zeal. A man can 
only speak, so long as he does not 
feel his speech to be partial and 
inadequate. It is partial, but he 
does not see it to be so, whilst he 
utters it. As soon as he is released 
from the instinctive and particu- 
lar, and sees its partiality, he shuts 
his mouth in disgust. For, no man 
can write anything, who does not 
think that what he writes is for the 
time the history of the world; or 
do anything well, who does not 
esteem his work to be of import- 
ance. My work may be of none, 
but I must not think it of none, or 
I shall not do it with impunity. 

In like manner, there is through- 
out nature something mocking, 
something that leads us on and on, 




but arrives nowhere, keeps no 
faith with us. All promise out- 
runs the performance. We live in 
a system of approximations. Every 
end is prospective of some other 
end, which is also temporary; a 
round and final success nowhere. 
We are encamped in nature, not 
domesticated. Hunger and thirst 
lead us on to eat and to drink; but 
bread and wine, mix and cook 
them how you will, leave us hun- 
gry and thirsty, after the stomach 
is full. It is the same with all our 
arts and performances. Our music, 
our poetry, our language itself are 
not satisfactions, but suggestions. 
The hunger for wealth, which re- 
duces the planet to a garden, fools 
the eager pursuer. What is the 
end sought? Plainly to secure the 
ends of good sense and beauty, 
from the intrusion of deformity or 




vulgarity of any kind. But what 
an operose method! What a train 
of means to secure a little conver- 
sation! This palace of brick and 
stone, these servants, this kitchen, 
these stables, horses and equipage, 
this bank-stock, and file of mort- 
gages; trade to all the world, 
country-house and cottage by the 
water-side, all for a little conver- 
sation, high, clear, and spiritual! 
Could it not be had as well by beg- 
gars on the highway? No, all these 
things came from successive efforts 
of these beggars to remove friction 
from the wheels of life, and give 
opportunity. Conversation, char- 
acter, were the avowed ends; 
wealth was good as it appeased the 
animal cravings, cured the smoky 
chimney, silenced the creaking 
door, brought friends together in 
a warm and quiet room, and kept 

43 



the children and the dinner-table 
in a different apartment. Thought, 
virtue, beauty, were the ends; but 
it was known that men of thought 
and virtue sometimes had the 
headache, or wet feet, or could lose 
good time, whilst the room was 
getting warm in winter days. Un- 
luckily, in the exertions necessary 
to remove these inconveniences, 
the main attention has been divert- 
ed to this object; the old aims have 
been lost sight of, and to remove 
friction has come to be the end. 
That is the ridicule of rich men, 
and Boston, London, Vienna, and 
now the governments generally of 
the world, are cities and govern- 
ments of the rich, and the 
masses are not men, but poor 
men, that is, men who would 
be rich; this is the ridicule of the 
class, that they arrive with pains 




and sweat and fury nowhere; 
when all is done, it is for nothing. 
They are like one who has inter- 
rupted the conversation of a com- 
pany to make his speech, and now 
has forgotten what he went to say. 
The appearance strikes the eye 
everywhere of an aimless society, 
of aimless nations. Were the ends 
of nature so great and cogent, as 
to exact this immense sacrifice of 
men? 

Quite analogous to the deceits in 
life, there is, as might be expected, 
a similar effect on the eye from the 
face of external nature. There is 
in woods and waters a certain en- 
ticement and flattery, together 
with a failure to yield a present 
satisfaction. This disappointment, 
is felt in every landscape. I have 
seen the softness and beauty of the 
summer clouds floating feathery 



45 




overhead, enjoying, as it seemed, 
their height and privilege of mo- 
tion, whilst yet they appeared not 
so much the drapery of this place 
and hour, as forelooking to some 
pavilions and gardens of festivity 
beyond. It is an odd jealousy: but 
the poet finds himself not near 
enough to his object. The pine 
tree, the river, the bank of flowers 
before him, does not seem to be 
nature. Nature is still elsewhere. 
This or this is but outskirt and far- 
off reflection and echo of the tri- 
umph that has passed by and is now 
at its glancing splendor and hey- 
day, perchance in the neighboring 
fields, or, if you stand in the field, 
then in the adjacent woods. The 
present object shall give you this 
sense of stillness that follows a 
pageant which has just gone by. 

What splendid distance, what re- 

46 



cesses of ineffable pomp and love- 
liness in the sunset! But who can 
go where they are, or lay his hand 
or plant his foot thereon? Off 
they fall from the round world 
forever and ever. It is the same 
among men and women as among 
the silent trees; always a referred 
existence, an absence, never a pres- 
ence and satisfaction. Is it, that 
beauty can never be grasped? in 
persons and in landscape is equally 
inaccessible? The accepted and 
betrothed lover has lost the wildest 
charm of his maiden in her accept- 
ance of him. She was heaven 
whilst he pursued her as a star: 
she cannot be heaven, if she stoops 
to such a one as he. 

What shall we say of this omni- 
present appearance of that first 
projectile impulse, of this flattery 
and balking of so many well- 

47 




meaning creatures? Must we not 
suppose somewhere in the universe 
a slight treachery and derision? 
Are we not engaged to a serious 
resentment of this use that is made 
of us? Are we tickled trout, and 
fools of nature? One look at the 
face of heaven and earth lays all 
petulance at rest, and soothes us 
to wiser convictions. To the in- 
telligent, nature converts itself in- 
to a vast promise, and will not be 
rashly explained. Her secret is 
untold. Many and many an CEdi- 
pus arrives: he has the whole 
mystery teeming in his brain. 
Alas! the same sorcery has spoiled 
his skill; no syllable can he shape 
on his lips. Her mighty orbit 
vaults like the fresh rainbow into 
the deep, but no archangel's wing 
was yet strong enough to follow it, 
and report of the return of the 





curve. But it also appears, that 
our actions are seconded and dis- 
posed to greater conclusions than 
we designed. We are escorted on 
every hand through life by spir- 
itual agents, and a beneficent pur- 
pose lies in wait for us. We can- 
not bandy words with nature, or 
deal with her as we deal with per- 
sons. If we measure our individ- 
ual forces against hers, we may 
easily feel as if we were the sport 
of an insuperable destiny. But if, 
instead of identifying ourselves 
with the work, we feel that the 
soul of the workman streams 
through us, we shall find the peace 
of the morning dwelling first in 
our hearts, and the fathomless 
powers of gravity and chemistry, 
and, over them, of life, pre-exist- 
ing within us in their highest 
form. 




The uneasiness which »the 
thought of our helplessness in the 
chain of causes occasions us, re- 
sults from looking too much at one 
condition of nature, namely, Mo- 
tion. But the drag is never taken 
from the wheel. Wherever the im- 
pulse exceeds the Rest or Identity 
insinuates its compensation. All 
over the wide fields of earth grows 
the prunella or self-heal. After 
every foolish day we sleep off the 
fumes and furies of its hours ; and 
though we are always engaged with 
particulars, and often enslaved to 
them, we bring with us to every 
experiment the innate universal 
laws. These, while they exist in 
the mind as ideas, stand around us 
in nature forever embodied, a 
present sanity to expose and cure 
the insanity of men. Our servi- 
tude to particulars betrays us into 
50 




a hundred foolish expectations. 
We anticipate a new era from the 
invention of a locomotive, or a 
balloon; the new engine brings 
with it the old checks. They say 
that by electro-magnetism, your 
salad shall be grown from the seed 
whilst your fowl is roasting for 
dinner: it is a symbol of our mod- 
ern aims and endeavors, — of our 
condensation and acceleration of 
objects : but nothing is gained : na- 
ture cannot be cheated : man's life 
is but seventy salads long, grow 
they swift or grow they slow. In 
these checks and impossibilities, 
however, we find our advantage, 
not less than in impulses. Let the 
victory fall where it will, we are 
on that side. And the knowledge 
that we traverse the whole scale of 
being, from the center to the poles 
of nature, and have some stake in 











la^^aifc 



every possibility, lends that sub- 
lime luster to death, which phil- 
osophy and religion have too out- 
wardly and literally striven to ex- 
press in the popular doctrine of 
the immortality of the soul. The 
reality is more excellent than the 
report. Here is no ruin, no dis- 
continuity, no spent ball. The di- 
vine circulations never rest nor 
linger. Nature is the incarnation 
of a thought, and turns to a 
thought again, as ice becomes 
water and gas. The world is mind 
precipitated, and the volatile es- 
sence is forever escaping again into 
the state of free thought. Hence 
the virtue and pungency of the in- 
flunce on the mind, of natural ob- 
jects, whether inorganic or organ- 
ized. Man imprisoned, man crys- 
tallized, man vegetative, speaks to 
man impersonated. That power 




Mk- . 



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_ 



which does not respect quantity, 
which makes the whole and the 
particle its equal channel, dele- 
gates its smile to the morning, and 
distills its essence into every drop 
of rain. Every moment instructs, 
and every object : for wisdom is in- 
fused into every form. It has been 
poured into us as blood; it con- 
vulsed us as pain ; it slid into us as 
pleasure; it enveloped us in dull, 
melancholy days, or in days of 
cheerful labor; we did not guess 
its essence, until after a long time. 





OCT 12 1909 



















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